Erstellt am: 15. 4. 2010 - 11:00 Uhr
Today's Webtip: In the Beginning was the Command Line
Neal Stephenson has to be one of my favorite writers. Snow Crash rocked, and watching him develope from just another Cyberpunk writer to a man willing to take on the history of systems and the nature of money has been a lot of fun.
One thing he wrote, in 1999, was a little essay that eventually became one of his thinner books. "In the Beginning was the Comand Line" dealt with the history of modern operating systems, and did a pretty good job of talking about some heavy stuff in an entertaining and enlightening manner. He spends most of his time talking about Windows, Linux, and the classic Macintosh OS.
Yes, it's outdated. But that doesn't make it any less readable. Stephenson has said in the past that he really should update it, but since he is a busy guy who tends to keep moving forward, it will probably never happen.
Fortunately for us, Garrett Birkel decided to tackle the text with some more up-to-date information. In 2004 he got permission from Neal to publish an annotated version of the essay from a post OSX perspective.
It's an interesting and entertaining read that might give you some new perspectives, and it is one of the less flammable OS texts I have run into.
You can find a copy of the original essay and Neal Stepehensons's home page:
www.cryptonomicon.com
You can find out the annotated version at Garrett Birkel's homepage:
garote.bdmonkeys.net
As an added bonus, you might want to check out the rest of his site. It's a lovely look back at the way things used to be...